


Guilt

by bell (bellaboo), bellaboo, usomitai (bellaboo)



Category: House M.D.
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-13
Updated: 2008-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 03:39:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/bell, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/bellaboo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/usomitai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"At the end of it, Crandall looks Wilson straight in the eye, and he is so fucking open it hurts Wilson to see someone that raw, that vulnerable."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guilt

**Guilt I**

 

I.

Wilson recognizes him instantly, those dirty locks and lost expression as if he couldn’t find his way around his own house. “Crandall, hello,” Wilson greets, to be civil, and extends a hand.

Crandall squints but soon says, “You’re House’s friend-- have you seen him? I need to talk to him.”

Wilson puts his hands, unshaken, into his lab coat. “He’s out of the country, for a conference.” He doesn’t mention how this was news to him, and had only heard of it by the time House was halfway over the Pacific.

He feels the same disappointment reflected in Crandall’s face, and that’s why he invites him for coffee “or something.”

II.

“It’s Leona,” Crandall stares depressed into his cup of coffee, as if there were meaning in its dark depths. “She’s not doing well. She won’t go to school, she hates her classmates, the teachers, and I don’t know what she’s doing--“

Crandall’s face cracks more and more until it breaks, tears springing to his eyes. “Sorry,” he apologizes, wiping at his face with the base of his hands. “I just--“

“It’s alright,” Wilson says, handing him a stiff paper napkin. Crandall blows his nose, a harsh, wet sound. “Tell me about it.” And Crandall does, for the next hour and twenty-three minutes. His monologue is punctuated by Wilson’s nods and encouragements, and the occasional nose-blowing.

At the end of it, Crandall looks Wilson straight in the eye, and he is so fucking open it hurts Wilson to see someone that raw, that vulnerable. Wilson himself had been that way; had to develop a thick skin in defense. How had Crandall gotten this far without doing the same? “Thank you,” he says, straight and pure.

“I didn’t do anything,” Wilson objects, shifting uncomfortably.

“You listened,” Crandall says, and tapped his hand against the table, palm down. “I owe you a drink.” Nothing Wilson does or says discourages him from the idea. “I know this place, great music-- you’ll love it.”

III.

Wilson does, in fact, love it.

It’s a dark place, with strategic blue neon lights spread throughout, and low, but intense jazz music played by a live band. The tables are small, small enough that leaning on to the surface with your elbows and tipping your forehead, you touched the face of the person on the other side.

It’s just the right place for easing up and getting intimate, unintentionally unburying long hidden secrets. “You knew House,” Wilson says after his third glass of Quinta dos Ventos. The world is starting to fuzz out, and the merry rippling from the base makes him tingle. “When he was younger.”

“Younger, but no different,” Crandall confides. He’s only on his second beer, but he already shows signs of drunkenness, swaying from side to side gently, unable to keep himself from smiling.

“Tell me about him,” Wilson says, leaning forward.

“Awesome player,” Crandall closes his eyes, his smile widening. “Listening to him on the guitar, I-- I got lost.” He opens his eyes, suddenly washed with shyness. “It’s cheesy, I know.”

“No,” Wilson says, partially because he wants Crandall to tell more, and partially because he’s felt the same, watching House unravel a diagnosis as easily as a shoelace knot. “No, not at all.”

And so Crandall tells Wilson about their gigs, how House, on stage, had been like someone possessed. “Thought he was crazy to give it all up, when he had so much talent, and go into medicine,” Crandall reminiscences, his fingers playing with the side of his glass. Beads of moisture streaked across the surface. “It was the sensible thing to do, of course, but it’s hard to imagine him as sensible….”

“It wasn’t because he was being sensible,” Wilson says. He has to speak slowly, careful to tell his mouth how to sound each syllable, lest he start to slur. “It was because it’s what he wanted.” House has never told him this, but Wilson is convinced of it. House always does what he wants. Even through his alcohol-induced daze, he’s hurt by it, like a teenager girl pissed at her best friend for not telling her about her first kiss with the football team’s star player.

“Yeah,” Crandall nods, once, twice. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

“How did you guys become friends?” Wilson asks casually.

Crandall frowns. “Thing is-- thing is, I don’t really know. I didn’t think he’d want anything to do with me, but--“ Wilson holds his breath. It feels like so much rides on this, as if it’d open up a universe of answers to his own relationship with House. “Just, one day, some of the kids in our biology class, they started bullying me, and G-man, he told them off. Never knew why. Next thing I knew, he was in the band I’d been trying to put together.”

Wilson’s throat closes, and he holds a hand there, looking away from Crandall’s distant gaze. House broke a girl’s finger for thing guy, and who knew what else. Wilson had seen the fierce, almost animal, protectiveness House held for this Crandall. Why him? Wilson doesn’t know if he’s pissed or sad or a whole lot more. All he knows is that whatever it is he’s feeling, it doesn’t feel good.

Wilson gets up to his feet, the world distorting madly in his head as he did so. “Should call it a night,” he takes a few tentative passes. “Work tomorrow--“ he trips, and somehow he ends up being kept from falling into the floor by Crandall.

“Hey, careful there,” Crandall says, sincerely and pathetically worried. “Don’t think you’re in any condition to drive.” Wilson doesn’t reply, too angry and embarrassed to admit it.

IV.

Crandall accompanies him in the taxi to the hotel, and Wilson doesn’t know what makes him do it grab Crandall’s face and kiss, and kiss, and kiss, but he does. Crandall doesn’t seem to mind, and they spend the rest of the ride macking each other; from there, the next logical step is the bed, and that’s where they end up. They fumble drunkenly and stupidly, but if their touches and licks and gropes are unstable, they’re so drunk they barely notice their lack of finesse.

Wilson drank too much to get it up, but Crandall doesn’t suffer from the same problem, so after Wilson reassures him repeatedly that this is what he wants, Crandall fucks Wilson, who’s on his hands and knees, gasping with every thrust. “Did--“ Wilson would’ve never asked, never, but the drinks have loosened him up like a vacuum makes an egg expand and explode. “Did you ever do this? With House?”

“A couple of times,” Crandall pants out. “Yeah.”

Wilson bows his head as Crandall comes inside him, and falls asleep with Crandall over him. It’s only when he wakes up the next morning, sticky and groggy, does Wilson realize just how screwed he is.

Not that that keeps him from going for a morning round with Crandall, fucking him in the shower, grimly satisfied with every groan he gets out of him, pounding as Crandall supports both their weights by leaning against the wall with his two palms. It’s amazing, and as Wilson spasms with release, he wants to do this again, and again, and again.

V.

House comes back from the conference cranky, spitting off acerbic commentary about the incompetent speakers and never-ending flights. Wilson listens to it all and is soothed. He’d missed this.

**Guilt II**

Wilson is in a mess of paper, triplicate form for peer evaluations, and the phone rings. Cradling the receiver between shoulder and elbow, to keep on signing his name the dozen more times he needs to, he says, "Hello."

"Hey, man, how you're doing?" An excited male voice asks. Wilson recognizes neither his voice nor his number.

"Fine, I guess?" Wilson replies, waiting for more context to figure out who it is.

"Listen, Leona's going out tonight, school trip, and I was thinking. I could play you more of Glenn Miller, that trombone player you liked--"

Wilson slowly straightens himself out, hand taking receiver and sitting up straight. Now that he's realized it's Crandall, his body supplies memories, wanting to shiver from the ghosts of drunken fondles over back, thighs, ass. He doesn't know what to say. It'd been a one-night stand-- with multiple "stands"-- and if he'd been in his right mind, wouldn't have done it.

House would be so pissed if he found out. He'd be even more pissed if it became a more-than-once thing. He'd yell. He'd go tight with indignation, would have his hand and jerk about in Wison's space, livid-- "Tonight, huh?" Wilson says softly, pinching at the skin between his lower lip and chin. Warmth starts to suffuse through his lower body. "Where do you live?"

Wilson wonders idly how Crandall could really believe that Leona was out on a school trip.

*

The turn-table, in the next room over, scratches out a tune Wilson doesn't recognize, with a mellow clarinet contrasting against a cocky trombone. It's a relaxed yet plucky piece, and that's how Wilson fucks Crandall, with assured and confident thrusts. Crandall gasps with every thud against the wall, and his fingers, twined around Wilson's shoulders, moving in time to the music, as if playing the piano off Wilson's back.

When Wilson had moaned at the first hot slick up his ass, Crandall had sushed him. His own ragged breath indicated he was holding back heavier sounds himself. "I know, man, I know-- but the music--" So Wilson bites back the noise welling up in him, even when he closes his eyes and thinks of how Crandall had done it with House all those years back, just two high, crazy teenagers with rocking instruments. They'd probably gone for the fun positions, like this one, where Crandall's feet were nowhere near the ground, knees around House's hip, and House, strong even then, back and ass muscles rippling as he gave it--

On the verge of coming, Wilson strokes Crandall to make him come first. Crandall throws his head back, finally letting out that groan he'd been holding in the whole time, and that's when Wilson lets himself orgasm, pushing up against Crandall once, twice, shuddering out his pleasure to the climax of the music.

It wasn't bad, having a soundtrack to your sex.

They dine after that, Chianti wine and a cooled roast beef Crandall had cooked. Crandall chatters, talking how Cape Cod, where Leona had supposedly gone, must be at this time of year. She's better, he declares proudly, smiling wide. It's because they talk about things. Honestly. Father to daughter.

Wilson nods, and thinks of how close she probably is, out and about with the perfect excuse. He bets she didn't even need a fake permission slip to get Crandall to believe her story. "You should meet her," Crandall says. "She's a great kid."

"Of course," Wilson replies, with a tight smile. What was he doing, having dinner with a man he simply tolerated, acting like this was more than just hot, anger-driven sex?

When Wilson starts to pay attention again, Crandall has already changed subject. "And that's another thing I like about you-- you take really good care of G-man."

The wine and roast beef suddenly felt like an unfortunate combination, churning in Wilson's stomach. "Oh?"

"Yeah, he used to be so-- so cruel, y'know?"

"He's not terribly nice now," Wilson feels obliged to pop Crandall of at least this illusion. But Crandall shakes his head, his limp locks going back and forth.

"I know, he was vicious to me and Leona, when she was the hospital. But he did it because he cared, right? Or maybe he's always been like that, and I didn't notice."

Wilson drinks what's left of his wine, and if he doesn't drink more, it's only because he knows then that he wouldn't be up for round two or beyond. But the wine leaves his stomach all the more disquieted, and dries out his mouth. He doesn't want to talk anymore. Palms flat down over the table top as he rises, "I could use a shower. Join me?"

The water and the inconsistent soap-filled caresses help Wilson feel cleaner, but Crandall tastes of their dinner. Wilson turns his back, to keep from having to kiss him.


End file.
